- Jobs are safer where customer or resource proximity is crucial. Growth or decline in the number of jobs depends on the state of the national economy, government regulations, and demographics. It is either not affected by globalization or, as in the case of the resource sector, it is affected positively by the growing world demand for commodities.

- Specialized skills benefit from a global platform. In the second category, I would put jobs where customer proximity is not important but the task requires specialized skills where the home country continues to be a world leader. As examples, look at jobs in research and development (at companies such as Apple), high-end manufacturing (at companies such as Boeing), and high-end marketing (at companies such as Nike). For these jobs, globalization is a plus. People in these jobs can now exploit the fruits of their labor on a much bigger stage and are thus likely to see their compensation grow at a faster than average pace.
 

- Non-specialized skills lose to lower cost labor in emerging markets. In the third category, I would put jobs where neither customer nor resource proximity is important but the task requires non-specialized skills where other countries offer vastly lower wages.As examples, look at jobs in low-skilled manufacturing (such as assembly of iPhones and iPads) or low-skilled services (such as call centers that answer routine questions about your credit card transactions or airline reservations). For these jobs, globalization is a negative. These are the jobs that are most liable to get shipped off-shore to places such as Mexico, China, India, or the Philippines.
 

In almost every professional services industry, one can see examples of all three types of jobs. Tasks such as software development require highly specialized skills and continue to be based predominantly within the US and Canada. In fact, despite a high level of overall unemployment in North America, regions such as Silicon Valley continue to scramble for talent. At the other end, look at tasks such as software testing. These jobs require a much lower level of computer science skills than software development and have suffered the most from off-shoring.
  

 About Haiyan: 

Haiyan Wang, Managing Partner, China India Institute, Adjunct Professor of Strategy, INSEAD, co-author of Getting China and India Right and The Quest for Global Dominance 2nd Edition

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• - North American firms must avoid what I call "commodity hell." "Commodity hell" does not mean pure commodities like gold and oil. "Commodity hell" is when you cannot honestly tell clients that your product is better, faster, or more reliable. When a client asks how your product compares to others, all you can say is, "We got what they got." That means you have no pricing power, no profit margin, and no reason to be in business.

- Our education system is inadequate and must be drastically overhauled. Until the 1960s, European and developing countries didn't bother educating most students students beyond age 15. Now, the rest of the world has caught up to North America, and even surpassed us.

- Though global competition is fierce, rapidly rising wages in China and India will give firms here a second chance to grab back some manufacturing market share. We will see some outsourcing contracts to India cancelled, and Chinese manufacturers build in huge price spikes.

About Todd:   

Todd G. Buchholz is a former White House economic adviser, former managing director of the Tiger hedge fund, and winner of the Allyn Young Teaching Prize from the Harvard Department of Economics.   He is the author of the just-released "RUSH: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race." Todd Buchholz has advised President Bush, and is a frequent commentator on ABC News, PBS, and CBS, and recently hosted his own special on CNBC.

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The emergence of the global economy is continuing to reshape business, and has particularly accelerated the changes in the workforce in three notable ways:

- The most obvious change gets headlines: entry-level and low-skilled jobs have largely been exported to Rapidly Developing Countries ("RDCs"). This makes it harder for young people, and older workers thrown out of work, to find jobs.

- It's no longer just low-skilled jobs that are being exported. Because of the rapidly growing numbers of educated people in China and India, there is now global competition for higher value-added jobs, including cutting edge research positions.

- The third change can be summed up by saying that there is less security - but more opportunity, and it's the latter part that people often miss. Any routine work can be either automated, or outsourced, which means that the most valuable work is creative, innovative work. Particularly in an entrepreneurial setting, such work can create opportunities that people might otherwise not have found. Creative, entrepreneurial work requires new skills and is a more demanding lifestyle - but produces a higher level of satisfaction than a routine job. It's a new world of work, and one that offers more - and demands more in return.